Bible Commentaries

Genesis 1:5 — remembering that God has revealed some things in the Bible which shed a great deal of light upon this very question: "But forget not this one thing, beloved, that ONE DAY is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as ONE DAY" (2 Peter 3:8). For a thousand years in thy sight are but as YESTERDAY when it is past, and as a watch in the night (Psalms 90:4). The apostle Paul referred to the entire present dispensation of the grace of God as "the DAY of salvation" (2 Corinthians 6:2). There

Exodus 11:4-8 — me, saying, Get thee out, and all the people that follow thee: and after that I will go out. And he went out from Pharaoh in hot anger." Here is resumed the conversation between Moses and Pharaoh that was broken off for the parenthesis of Exodus 11:1-3. Pharaoh had just threatened Moses with death, and Moses, now knowing that total victory was assured, responded, "Very well", but before leaving, he thundered one more word from Jehovah. "About midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt" What midnight

Exodus 11:9-10 — goddess of reproduction. c.    Lice (gnats) (Exodus 8:17), against Seb, god of the earth. d.    Flies (beetles), against Khephera, the sacred scarab. e.    Murrain on Egyptian cattle (Exodus 9:3), against Apis and Hathor, the sacred bull and cow. f.    Boils on man and beast (Exodus 9:10), against Typhon, the evil-eye god. g.    Hail (Exodus 9:23), against Shu, the god of the atmosphere. h.    Locusts

Exodus 12:37-42 — almost every point of view."J. Coert Rylaarsdam, op. cit., p. 925. The author of that denial then went on to prove his point by asserting that: (1) such a large number could not have lived in Egypt; (2) they could not have survived in the desert, and (3) they could not have found enough room in Canaan! Millions of people today live in each one of those areas! Besides that, God fed the Israelites in the wilderness; and their clothes did not wear out! Such denials are merely amusing to believers. An

2 Kings 25:1-3 — would be returned, signifying the complete independence of Judah from Babylon" (Jeremiah 28:1-4). "We can only imagine the wild enthusiasm with which the foolish people greeted such bold predictions."F. W. Farrar in Expositor's Bible, 2 Kings, p. 443. (1)    Zedekiah was also, in all probability, seduced by the rampant paganism supported and advocated by the priesthood itself, a paganism which had thoroughly replaced the worship of Jehovah in the Temple of Solomon. Farrar, commenting

Isaiah 53:4-6 — executed every cruelty possible upon Jesus; because without the sacrifice of Jesus in paying the penalty of human transgressions, Satan would have achieved his purpose of the total destruction of Adam's race. The words "borne our griefs" in Isaiah 53:4 in the Hebrew are literally "borne our sicknesses";Wycliffe Old Testament Commentary, p. 647. but this is not a reference to Jesus' suffering from all our sicknesses, but to his healing all diseases. It was to make this point clear that the translators

Hosea 3:1 — friend" Some have tried to make out that the friend loved by the woman here was her husband; but as Dummelow noted, any such interpretation "involves a clumsy tautology."J. R. Dummelow, Commentary on the Holy Bible (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1937), p. 548. "And an adulteress" The woman in focus here is one who has violated her marriage covenant. Moreover, the "love" in view here was nothing to be compared with the love of God which is forcefully contrasted with it in this very verse. If we

Amos 4:1 — this, but it should be noted that most of the older commentators did not go along with that view. Clarke wrote, "I think the prophet means men of effeminate and idle lives."Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Whole Bible (New York: T. Mason and G. Lane, 1837), p. 680. The word here is "cows," the feminine form of "kine" having no other meaning; but the uncertainty with regard to the meaning derives from the fact that the Hebrew text in this place uses a mixture of feminine and masculine gender words with

Numbers 20:1-9 — their cattle drink. And Moses took the rod from before Jehovah, as he commanded him." "In the first month" (Numbers 20:1). "This is the first month of the fortieth year."J. R. Dummelow, Commentary on the Holy Bible (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1937), p. 111. Of course, the people had already gone to Kadesh in the second year (Numbers 13:26), but this does not mean that they had remained in the same area all that time. During the long interim, there might have been maintained a kind of headquarters

Jonah 1:2 — Assyria, was founded by Nimrod (Genesis 10:11), and by Ninos, the mythical founder of the Assyrian empire, according to Greek and Roman writers who repeatedly referred to it as "that great city." The size of it is given as "three day's journey" (Jonah 3:3); and this agrees with the writings of the classical Greek and Roman writers who called it the "greatest city in the world at that time."C. F. Keil, op. cit., p. 390. Butler gives the following description of Nineveh from an ancient writer, Diodorus: "It

Luke 24:1-3 — commandment. But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came unto the tomb, bringing the spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb. And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus. (Luke 24:1-3) See the article at end of chapter on "The Four Witnesses Agree." Sabbath day … This was Saturday, the second of the back-to-back sabbaths intervening between the crucifixion and the first day of the week. See under Mark 15:42 in my

John 15:1 — of these, see under John 8:12. Jesus' choice of this metaphor has been attributed to: (1) a fruitful vine growing over the window of the upper room where the discourses were spoken, (2) to the great ornamental vine decorating the door of the temple, (3) to the vineyards through which the Lord and the disciples passed when they left the upper room, (4) to Jeremiah's words, through which God said of Israel, "I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed: how then art thou turned into the

John 17:21 — advocating his own kind of unity, such as: (1) the unity of authoritarianism, in which all blindly obey the ecclesiastics elevated above them; (2) the kind of unity proposed by the snake to the frog, in which one entity is swallowed up in another; (3) the unity in which each group of believers accepts his status under some system of allocation, and in which, like in the cemetery, everyone lies as complacently as possible and does not infringe on his neighbors; (4) the unity in which many groups

John 2:8 — …. Once, in one year only, God, now incarnate, short-circuits the process; makes wine in a moment; uses earthenware jars instead of vegetable fibers to hold the water.A. M. Hunter, The Gospel according to John (Cambridge University Press. 1965), p. 30. Regarding the question of what kind of wine this was, all kinds of irresponsible speculations abound. Even Barnes gave elaborate arguments to prove that the wine here created by the Lord was nothing more than the pure juice of grapes with no alcohol

Acts 10:44 — believers, many strange and untenable theories have been erected. Trenchard, for example, thought that here, "The Pentecostal baptism was extended to Gentile believers on the sole ground of repentance and faith." E. H. Trenchard, op. cit., p. 3. However, there is no mention of repentance in this passage; and, as the Spirit fell on them "as Peter began to speak," it is incorrect to say that they were "believers" when that occurred. It is a mistake to make this unique occurrence

Acts 2:17 — men, the same thought appearing in Mark 12:6. (2) Those were the last days in the sense that Israel's day of grace was running short. Their long and repeated rebellions against God were soon to culminate and become final in their rejection of Christ. (3) Those were last days in the sense that Jerusalem, the temple, and the Jewish state would be utterly destroyed before that generation died (in 70 A.D.). (4) Those were the last days in the sense that the prophecies of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:31-35) and

Acts 28:21-22 — although the ban had by this time been relaxed, the Jerusalem hierarchy would have been loathe to open old wounds. (2) Having already failed miserably to convince the lower courts of Felix and Festus, they knew they had no case worthy of the name. (3) They had, at that time, no powerful advocate in Rome who could have aided their plea. The date here is 60 A.D., two whole years prior to Poppaea Sabina's marriage to Nero. F. F. Bruce, op. cit., p. 530. (4) They were as busy as beavers with the intrigues

Romans 1:5 — was about to write the most important document on the subject of faith that the world would ever have, in which, of necessity, there would be written some of those things which even an apostle would consider "hard to be understood" (2 Peter 3:16); therefore, it was a matter of gracious discernment upon his part that, in the very beginning of the letter, he made it clear that, throughout Romans, "faith" should be read "obedient faith." Evidence is totally lacking that

2 Corinthians 7:6 — nowhere mentioned Titus by name, especially in view of the fact that Luke apparently avoided doing so in relating a circumstance (Acts 20:4) where Titus' name would have been very appropriate. Sir William M. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveler, pp. xxxviii, 390. Also, F. F. Bruce, The Book of Acts (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, Publishers, 1954), p. 406. Furthermore, the very first notice of Titus is in Acts 15:2, where Luke referred to him, but not by name; the certainty that Titus was the one

James 2:26 — same people were the ones who murdered the Son of God. They had every kind of faith there is; so faith can and often does exist without works, being therefore separated from works. See full comment on the text from John in my Commentary on John, pp. 305-307. "Faith uses works as its means." R. C. H. Lenski, op. cit., p. 591. This is untrue because James represented works, not as something faith was using, but as something "working with," or "cooperating with" faith (James